Accessibility Consulting Services

Website accessibility is the practice of using tools, code, and/or a design aesthetic so that people with disabilities can easily use your site. Following accessibility standards can also benefit your entire user community because it forces the website owner and the developer to think through things like navigation, readability, and object tagging. By paying attention to website accessibility you remove barriers that may prevent certain people from being able to effectively use your website, buy your services, or consume your information.

For instance, someone with a vision problem may use a screen reading software application to read a website for them. That application would start at the top of your web page and read it in the order the code was provided behind-the-scenes. If your developer doesn’t pay attention to the document object model, which refers to the underlying structure of your page, elements may be read out of order, removing their context and making them confusing.

What about elements that are on every single page of your site like your navigation? Your average user likely scans your navigation but then looks to other portions of the page on subsequent page loads, because after the first page they know where to look for your nav (if your site is built well). However, screen reading software would re-read that navigation on every single page load, wasting precious time and becoming insanely annoying! Simple accessibility techniques enable a user to skip the navigation which eliminates redundancy and improves usability. This relatively small tweak can make a massive difference to someone with disabilities.

And consider the images you use on your site. A screen reading application cannot describe the content of the image or the overall look of the page unless it’s told what the images are. This is easily accomplished by adding descriptive attributes to your images, lists, or other objects to help a person with disabilities understand what a web page looks like. And this simple practice pays SEO dividends as well because it also helps search engines understand what’s on your site.

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